Product Strategy for PMs

At its very core, the role of the PM is to make sure that the team is solving the right problems and building the right products.

Product Driven

• Product Driven

  • PMs write requirements

  • Eng builds based on requirements

• Pros

  • Customer Centric approach

  • Build what csutomers want

• Chalenges

  • Lack of empathy from non customer facing teams

• Example: Amazon Prime

Engineering Driven

• Engineering Driven

  • Engineers build things

  • PM brings it to market

• Pros

  • Promote technical innovation

  • Sometimes customers don’t know what they want

• Challenges

  • Increase possibility that product will not resonate with the cusomter

• Example: Google Glass

Hybrid Partnership

• Hybrid Partnership (best of both worlds)

  • PMs write requirements but engineers are included in identifiying them

  • Engineers builds based on requirements

• Identifying problems (understand, Identify, Define)

  • Define the problem

  • Understand user & needs

  • Conduct market & user research

• Creating Solutions/ Strategy

  • Strategy for how to solve

  • What the product does

  • How it relates to goals & KPIs

• Planning

  • Timelines

  • Splitting into milestones

• UX Design

  • Mocks and specs

  • Review and procide context

  • Usability testing

• Implementation

  • Are requirements clear?

  • What is missing?

  • Are we on track?

• Testing

  • How should it work?

  • Does it work?

  • What needs to be fixed?

• Launch

  • Silent launch

  • Big announce

  • Slow roll

• Review

  • How did it go?

  • What was the impact?

  • What did we learn?

What a PM does during the whole time of the project

• Communication: with team and stake holders

• Keep the team happy

• Coordinating all the time

  • Coordinate

  • Remove blockers

  • Make sure, things get done

Researchers:

• Role

  • Discover key user insights and behavior

  • Help answering important questions

  • Get feedback from usability testing

• Interactions

  • Align on research

  • Share findings

Designers

• Role

  • Design the product

  • UI

  • Make sure, the right problem is addressed

• Interactions

  • Align problem definition and scope

  • Reviews

Engineering

• Role

  • Build the product

  • Maintain the product

  • Solve hard problems

• Interactions

  • Review requirements

  • Feasability discussions

Technical Program Managers (TPM) & Program Managers (PgM)

• Role

  • Project Management

  • Status reports

  • Keep time schedule

• Interactions

  • Prioritization

  • Discussions

  • Raodmap review

QA

• Role

  • Test the product

  • Documentation

• Interactions

  • Review PRD

  • Review test plan

  • Flag bugs & prioritize

Data Science

• Role

  • Provide key insights based on data

  • Design and roll out experiements

  • Quantify impact

• Interactions

  • Align on data science priorities

  • Review PRD (Product Requirement Document)

  • Review results

Marketing & PR

Sales

Support

Legal & Privacy

i18n (International Team)

• Research

• User interviews

• Stakeholder interviews

• Prototyping

• …

“Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It’s about saying NO to all but the most crucial features”

"Innovation bedeutet nicht, zu allem Ja zu sagen. Es geht darum, NEIN zu sagen zu allen, außer zu den wichtigsten Funktionen.

• Tell a cohesive story

• Get buy in from the team / Stakeholders

• Say no

• Attach goals

Example:

Product Requirements Document

PRDs always need to have these components:

• frame the problem… and answers the question WHY are we solving it.

• outline the goals… both user goals, business goals, and success metrics. This section also helps to explain WHY the problem should be solved.

• describe the requirements… WHAT does the product do? Remember, as a PM you are answering WHAT the product does. Design and engineering have to figure out HOW.

Additionally, other components can include:

• assumptions

• options considered

• UI mocks (it can be super helpful to work with design and include these in the PRD because it is often easier to communicate some ideas visually instead of through text)

• out of scope

• risks & mitigations

• support plan

Example:

• Market Research

• User Research

• Product Data

• Support Data

• Efficiency gains

The best product opportunities solve user problems and meet business goals

• Size: How many people have this problem?

• Growth: Is the size of the market increasing?

• Acquisition: How much does it cost to acquire customers?

• Online research

• Headlines & News

• Similar products

• Trends

  • Mary Meeker’s Internet Trends

  • Google Trends

To find the target user, you'll need:

• Review data including market research

• Perform interviews

• Conduct surveys

• Run focus groups

• Review existing customer data

User Characteristics (once you have the data)

• Demographics

• Motivations

• Goals

• Frustrations

User Personas

Once you've identified trends across these characteristics for your users, you can create user personas to represent them. A user persona is a fictional person that you create who might use your product.

As you're developing the product, you'll refer back to your personas, in order to stress test and challenge some of your ideas.

Creating a Persona

1. Start by creating a name for your persona

2. Include a photo, or illustration of what this user might look like

3. Add a quote with a key insight about this user.

4. Include a description of the user with details that are relevant to your product

5. Outline the user's goals

6. Describe what motivates the user

Eexample:

TAM = Total Addressable Market

There are three approaches to calculate TAM:

Top Down

Start with a high level view of the economy, and then narrow that down based on factors like demographics. For example, you usually will start will everyone in the world and narrow down that audience to people who are interested in your product.

Top Down Example

7.8 billion people on Earth 330 million people in the US 2 liters per day $1 per liter (330 million people) x (2 liters per day) x ($1 per liter) x (365 days per year)= $241B

Bottoms Up

Use known data points that you have (data from early customers and sales) that you could extrapolate to represent a larger market opportunity. For example, if you are already selling a product in one region and were considering selling it globally.

Bottoms Up Example

330 million people in the US 25% of population buys one liter per day $1 per liter (330 million people) x (25% of people) x ($1 per liter) x (365 days per year)= $30.1B

Value Theory

Used for new product categories where you don’t have much information to base estimates on. This involves conducting market research to understand how much people would pay for your product and how many potential customers you have.

ROI = Return of Invest

How to calculate ROI:

or for Software:

Payback period measures the amount of time that it takes for a product to recoup the initial investment required to build it.

Example: Payback Periods

We often start by calculating the impact per year

and divide the cost by the impact per year:

• Costumer need

  • Is this a real problem?

  • Painkiller vs. vitamin (urgency vs. nice to have)

• Your solution

  • Does it really solve the problem

  • What alternatives does the customer have?

  • Is your solution way better?

• Differentiation

  • Is it different?

  • How is it different?

• Value

  • How much will people pay for it?

  • What can you do to increase willingness to pay?

  • How much do people pay for alternatives?

• User Interviews

• Focus groups

• Surveys

• Design Sprint

• Business problem

• Benefits

• Costs

• Risks

• Possible solutions

• Timeline

• Competition

Your business case should be organized into the following sections:

Executive Summary The Executive summary summarizes the entire document, including the recommendation. You want to make sure that it has enough detail that if it’s the only thing people read they will understand the justifications for building the product. It’s also the first thing people read and usually the last thing you will write to make sure that everything is cohesive.

Problem Statement The Problem Statement explains the problem you are trying to solve, as well as the associated goals. It should also clearly link the problem back to the business strategy and goals.

Analysis of Product Opportunity In the Analysis of Product Opportunity section, you discuss the merits of why solving the problem is important. You’ll usually want to touch on the cost of the problem and the size of the opportunity. Additionally, you can discuss what would happen if you didn’t solve the problem.

Possible Solutions In the Possible Solutions section, you will describe the potential solutions to the problem. For each solution, you should discuss benefits, cost, timeline, and risks.

Recommended Approach And finally in the Recommended Approach section, you put forward your recommendation for which solution is the best and why.

Other tips to keep in mind:

• Tailor it to your audience

• Shorter is better

• Make it interesting

• Demonstrate business value

• What your product looks like in its final state

• Essence of your product

• What your product does and why it matters to users

• Can be summarized in a sentence or two

• What you’re building

• Who it’s for

• Why it matters

• Gets the team excistet and motivated about buidling the product

• Serves as a north star for guiding the team and decision making

You’ll want to make sure that your vision is all of the following:

• Inspiring

• Ambitious

• Easy to explain

• Something the team believes in

• Something you evolve over time

• Something you share out frequently

Here are a few examples of vision:

• Google Wifi: A wireless router that people love

• Facebook: Connect with friends and the world around you

• Amazon: Earth's most customer centric company and a place where people can come to find and discover anything they might want to buy online

Strategy is about how you are going to realize your vision and takes the following things into account:

• User needs

• Key Features

• Competitors & Differentiation

• Business Goals

• Trends

• A balance between features, user and market needs, and business goals

• Creating building blocks for how to get to your vision

• High level, but with a little more detail

• Goal oriented, and preferably measurable

business model describes how a business creates, delivers, and captures value.

• Ads

• Purchase / Licensing

• Pay per use

• Subscription

• Freemium

As part of competitive analysis, you’ll want to understand:

• Product offering and key features

• Differentiators

• Target customers

• Distribution channels

• Price points

An MVP, or minimum viable product, has just enough features to get early adopters excited. After launching an MVP, you’ll get a lot of feedback that will help you understand if you have product market fit and what areas you should invest in next

To create an MVP:

• Start with the business model canvas

• Weigh against competing solutions

• Make sure it’s aligned with business objectives

• Translate to requirements

• Identify KPIs

KPIs, or Key Performance Indicators, are metrics that measure the performance of your product against your strategy. They capture the big picture and help you to understand how well your product is working (or isn’t working) and are aligned with business objectives. Additionally, they help to measure how changes you make to your product move the needle (or don’t)

There are different types of KPIs for measuring different types of performance:

• Business KPIs - measures how you are doing against business goals

• Product KPIs- measures how the product is being used

• Quality -KPIs measures how often users encounter issues

• Development KPIs - measures how the team executes

Tips for picking KPIs:

• Don’t measure everything

• Align user, product, and business goals

• Make sure KPIs are measurable

• Use percentages and time periods when setting goals

Active listening is:

• More than just listening

• Being an engaged listener

• Fully understanding other points of views

• Not imposing your own views

Tips for active listening:

• Make eye contact and smile

• Provide encouragement

• Don’t interrupt

• Ask clarifying questions when needed

• Paraphrase

Story Elements

• Hero (your user): who they are, what they care about, and their background

• Goal: what the hero is trying to accomplish

• Villain (the problem): whatever is preventing the hero from reaching their goal

• Sidekick (your product): something that will help the Hero reach their goal

• Plot: describes how the Hero and Sidekick defeat the Villain and achieve their goal

Crafting a Story

1. Start with the big picture to provide context (who your audience is and what they care about)

2. Describe the problem or conflict (the problem your product solves)

3. Outline the plot for getting to resolution (how your product solves the problem and why it is better than other solutions)

4. Describe the impact and conclusion (why it matters that the problem was solved)

Storytelling Tips

• Keep the story simple

• Make it memorable by including emotional moments

• Show instead of telling

• Practice! Practice! Practice! until you can tell the story without referring to notes

Why Does Persuasion Matter?

Persuasion is important because you work with lots of people and need to align the team needs to be aligned-- but you don’t have direct authority over everyone. Instead, you have to convince them!

Types of Persuasion

The team will trust you if your messages use:

• Ethos (credibility): you are qualified to speak on the topic due to your experiences, personal character, background, and achievements.

• Pathos (emotion): you can make your audience feel a certain way

• Logos (logic): you build an argument based on logic and facts

The most persuasive messages use all three types of persuasion.

How to Build Persuasive Messages:

• Know your audience

• Pick a viewpoint

• Know the other perspectives

• Be data-driven

• Discuss objections

• End with a call to action

Presentation Structure

• Introduction: “This is what I’m going to tell you” and background info

• Body: “This is what we’re here to talk about”

• Conclusion: “This is what I just told you” and next steps

Slide Layout

• Keep slides simple

• One takeaway per slide

• Limit the amount of text on each slide (no paragraphs)

• Use visuals carefully

Strategies for Negotiation

BATNA (Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement)

Understanding each side’s best alternative to a negotiated agreement will help you focus on what happens if you can’t reach an agreement -- and that can give you leverage to get to an agreement.

Focus on interests

It’s helpful to understand what each side is interested in and why so understand where to focus during negotiation.

Make the pie bigger

Based on understanding the other side’s interests, are there any things that you can offer that will be valuable for them that won’t cost you anything or be difficult for you to give away?

Use objective criteria

Using objective criteria bases the conversation in reality and helps remove emotion.

Present multiple solutions

Multiple solutions help you get more information because you receive feedback about how the other side feels about each option.